AKRON, Ohio - On September 11th, Bob Dylan announced a string of fall tour dates that includes an appearance at Akron's E.J. Thomas Hall, 198 Hill St., Friday, November 3.

R&B legend Mavis Staples will also be a special guest.

Dylan wrapped up a summer tour this July following the March release of his latest album, "Triplicate," a 30-song, triple album of classic American standards. His fall tour kicked off in California this October.

Bob Dylan is returning to E.J. Thomas Hall with 50 years of his own highly influential back catalog of songs.

Dylan is also returning to E.J. with the third album in his trilogy of albums with his subdued take on American standards, many associated with Frank Sinatra.

The latest Triplicate is indeed a triple album. It features three discs, each containing 10 songs and lasting 32 minutes, which Dylan considers a lucky number of completion and a symbol of light (and the length recalls the old days of vinyl, when 15 minutes a side was optimal for the best sound).

The music-listening world may not have been clamoring for another rock/pop legend’s takes on As Time Goes By, Autumn Leaves or Stormy Weather. Particularly after so many veteran artists, including Rod Stewart, Carly Simon, Boz Scaggs, Bryan Ferry, Linda Ronstadt, Joni Mitchell, Dr. John, Willie Nelson and Paul McCartney, among many others, have offered up their takes on the hoary classics.

But for Dylan, the trilogy isn’t an easy cash grab or dive into the pool of nostalgia of days of yore. It comes from someone who has lived, seen, done and heard many things and hears the human experience in the well-crafted lyrics and melodies.

Dylan’s voice isn’t what it once was, and for many listeners “what it once was,” wasn’t all that great to start. But the albums contain some of Dylan’s best vocal work in a long time.

He clears his throat, dialing back that now familiar raspy croak and clipped phrasing heard on recent pre-standard albums such as Tempest and in performance for several years, and uses it to imbue the lyrics with all 76 years of his experience. Dylan does this while keeping the original melodies (relatively) clean with the occasional crack in his voice, but using delicate and deliberate phrasing — one of Sinatra’s defining abilities — to give the lyrics the emotional gravitas and/or tenderness they deserve.

“As a man who has never paused at wishing wells, Now I’m watching children’s carousels,” his world-weary voice, intones on September of My Years. “And their laughter’s music to my ears. And I find that I’m smiling gently as I near September, the warm September of my years.”

Throughout, Dylan is backed by members of his longtime road band. The arrangements on Triplicate are tastefully understated, sometimes to the point of being a bit sleepy. And while the critics tend to dote on every sound Ol’ Zimmy releases, including the trilogy, even some Dylanophiles, generally an extremely loyal bunch willing to follow whatever musical path he chooses, have been divided on the relative merits of Triplicate and its predecessors, Fallen Angels, released last year, and the Sinatra repertoire-focused Shadows in the Night from 2015.

But while Dylan is checking pet projects off his musical bucket list he’s also smart enough to keep serving fans with archival product such as Trouble No More, the 8 CD/1 DVD collection of “unreleased live & studio recordings plus never-before-seen footage from Dylan’s legendary 1980 Tour!” His popular Bootleg Series is up to 12 volumes, and there has been a steady stream of releases of demos and live recordings from his various classic periods.

Onstage Dylan has been flouting expectations and dividing longtime fans. The detached onstage demeanor, which suggests he may as well be playing in front of a room of mannequins, is expected from anyone who has seen him recently. But set lists for his colloquially named Neverending Tour have been sprinkled with tunes from the albums alongside desired originals such as Highway 61 Revisited and Blowin’ in the Wind. Lately, he has also spent most of his stage time singing and sitting at the piano instead of standing with a guitar.

Stable Staples

Opening for Dylan will be Mavis Staples, longtime lead singer of the ’60s and ’70s family group the Staple Singers, who produced a healthy stable of classics of their own, including Respect Yourself, I’ll Take You There and Let’s Do It Again. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999.

Staples and Dylan have a longtime friendship and mutual admiration that at one time included Dylan being enraptured enough with her to propose decades ago. They didn’t get hitched, but they did record a duet of Dylan’s Gonna Change My Way of Thinking, for a Grammy-nominated tribute album of songs from Dylan’s “born again” period.

Staples is the lone survivor of the Staple Singers, and for much of the decade she’s been quite active recording and releasing albums, including the Grammy-winning You Are Not Alone and One True Vine, both produced by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy. The albums feature an eclectic array of songs written specifically for her by contemporary artists and admirers including Tweedy, Nick Cave, Funkadelic, Valerie June and Bon Iver.

Later this month, Staples will release her 17th album, If All I Was Was Black, produced and composed by Tweedy.

For many non-Dylanophiles, going to see him in concert is just one of those things you should do as a fan of popular music and someone who wants to experience a taste of what has made him so important. No, it’s unlikely to generate a pop culture moment such as 1965’s Newport Folk Festival (Dylan goes electric!), and he doesn’t possess the warmest, most engaging stage presence.

But he is one of America’s and the music world’s bona fide, Grade AAA Living Legends, even if he seems to wish people would stop reminding him of that.

Sorry to say that Chrissie will be a no show in Akron tonight as she started touring Australia and New Zealand only yesterday! I know she will be there in spirit though and I'm sure she would have liked to have been there when Bob visited her home town. She's a big Dylan fan and I have spotted her at a London show before, I believe she was at some of the Palladium shows in London earlier this year as well.

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